When the deficit gets too large, politicians in Washington invariably try to cut programs that don't fit their political agenda from the top down, causing more spending in the long run to fix the resulting mess.
The only way to get lasting budget cuts is to:
* Incentivize cost cutting with bonuses for managers and department heads who find creative ways to cut costs without firing people.
* Eliminate the perception that money not spent in a given budget year will be cut from a department's budget the next year. This flaw in government spending practices singlehandedly causes more hoarding of resources than everything else combined.
By setting such policies, the President could go a long way towards fixing the deficit and freeing much-needed resources for more important things.